


Vulkreinzaan

by ckret2



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Gen, Modded Skyrim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 08:34:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17763395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: A winged Dwemer construct powered by a unique dragon soul gem wakes up in a sinking ship, only to find that both the Dwemer and the dragons have disappeared, the human settlements he remembers are now populated by the undead, all the living mer and men speak a new language, and everything wants to kill him. The construct's name—translated, he insists, only VERY loosely into modern Cyrodilic—is Starscream. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.





	Vulkreinzaan

**Author's Note:**

> So turns out there's a Skyrim mod that lets you make your character look like Starscream. That's my only justification for this fic. Updates will be sporadic. I've got a loose plotline in my head, and a list of other TFP characters to drop into the setting as they're encountered; but the main objective here is "Look!! Starscream is in Skyrim! Shenanigans!" so it should be fun even if we never get around to a plot.
> 
> Other mods that made this fic possible include Live Another Life and Frostfall.

Icy water flooded over him, and he jolted awake. He sat up, thrashing at the water, until his head was clear. He gasped; the air was as icy as the water. 

Where was he? It was dark, a single magic-lit lamp dimly illuminated the room from underwater. The walls were wood, crates floated in the water. The water in his crate was up to his chest. He flailed out of the half-submerged crate, fell back all the way under the water, and groped blindly until he found a table to latch onto and pull himself upon. 

Gods, it was cold. Even clinging to a table to help him float, the water was right back up to his chest, and his legs still couldn't reach the bottom. He needed to get out of the water. He was going to freeze to death if he didn't find somewhere warmer. 

He pushed as much water out of his system as he could—excess air bubbled through the gaps under his cuirass and up around his chest—sealed his body against the water, took a deep breath in through his mouth, held it, and dove back under the water. He grabbed the lamp up, reached awkwardly over his shoulder, and felt around until he managed to hang the lamp from the point of an inner wing. The floor was tilted, and the wooden walls around him creaked and groaned. Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought the water was rising. There was a window, but it was blocked by what appeared to be a massive chunk of ice, and around the ice all he could see was more water. 

He had to be on a ship. He'd never been on a ship before, to his recollection, but the evidence certainly fit. Just his luck that it was a sinking ship. A _frigid_ sinking ship. And—looking around for a door—one that was upside down. Couldn't he have been rudely awoken to discover that he was marooned on some warm, tropical island? No. Of course not. A frigid, sinking, upside down ship. Of all the places to wake up... 

Complain while moving. If the ship was sinking, a hole had been punched in the hull. If the ship was upside down, it stood to reason that the hole was now on top. Right? So, if he kept climbing up, he'd find the exit. 

He climbed over the doorway into the next higher room. To his relief, through the next doorway the shallow water gave way to dry floor. ... Dry ceiling. Whatever. 

He climbed the hall, looking around as he did for some exit—a ladder, a window—but nothing. There were a couple of fallen chests of drawers, though, and an overturned bed with a pelt under it. If he could make it to dry land and start a fire, that pelt might save him from freezing to death. He lifted his inner wing higher to help him see as he raided drawers for more supplies. (All the furniture was wood. Odd. But, sensible for a ship, he supposed. Stone and metal would only weigh it down.) Amidst some soaked food and useless potions, he managed to recover a couple of garments, three books too waterlogged to read, and a knife. He tossed his finds on the pelt, rolled it in a tube, tucked it under one arm, and hurried upstairs. 

An upside down staircase led up (down?) to the hull of the ship. Someone else had been here already; crates were stacked in a slope, wooden planks leading up to the next floor. So a crew had been on board when the ship sank! And they'd left him behind to sink! Oh, if he ever caught up with them again— whoever they were— 

Never mind. Focus on surviving. He climbed up the ramp; his narrow feet slipped, he fell, and he decided it would be prudent to set aside his dignity and crawl up the ramp instead. It was damp, and splinters stuck to his claws. Disgusting. The wood must have soaked the water up like a sponge. That seemed like the kind of nasty thing wood might do. 

He was in the hull, all right, but he couldn't see a hole. The far end of the hull—the low end—was underwater; maybe there. He carefully climbed down toward the other end, pausing to examine a ragged pile of clothes for anything warm he could take with him. 

A corpse's face leered back at him. 

He shrieked, wings flared wide in fear. He clutched his rolled pelt to his chest and stumbled back from the body. The tips of his wings caught in the hull. He shrieked again. The lantern crashed against the hull and went out. 

The wood splintered around one wing, and he fled down toward the water. 

Navigating by the glow of his eyes instead of a lantern, he could barely see to the end of his arm. He could barely feel to the end of his arm, too. His joints creaked when he bent them, and they felt brittle. Even if he warmed up, he might end up covered in fractures. Gods forbid his armor _shatter..._

Don't think about it. Keep moving. There had to be a way out—and away from the corpse—somewhere at this end of the hull... 

He fell back in the water. 

Damn, it was cold! Scrap, scrap, scrap, scrap, scrap... 

But, there—just underneath the waterline, the hole that had sunk the ship. Oh, thank Akatosh! He climbed carefully into the hole, keeping a tight grip on the broken hull—he could faintly see light filtering through the water above, but only darkness below—and scrabbled up on top of the upturned hull, sharp fingertips and foot tips digging into the wood, until his head broke free of the surface. He crawled out of the water, coughing it out of his mouth and from under his chest, and collapsed. Safe. Temporarily. After a long moment, he weakly lifted himself up to look around. 

He was lying next to another corpse. 

He shrieked again and kicked it into the water. 

The wind was no more merciful than the water. It blew stiffly against his back; he couldn't feel the tips of his wings, and what he _could_ feel ached from the cold. And he hadn't noticed while trying to escape the ship, but now that the panic was over, he realized he was shaking so hard he rattled. And the ship was probably still sinking. He needed to get to land. 

He fought his aching joints to get to his feet and look around. Of course, he was in the middle of the ocean. Of course! Was land even visible from here? He turned in a slow circle, staring desperately at the horizon with his pelt clutched to his chest. 

There! To the—what was that? He couldn't tell what direction it was, he was too cold to feel north tugging at him—whatever direction it was, the black horizon rose up in jagged teeth to block the stars. And closer even than that, he could see starlight dully reflecting off a low hill. An island! Or a peninsula, or—or _something._ Something dry. He was saved! 

If he could get to it. 

He sank back to his knees and looked over both sides of the capsized hull, fingers digging into the woods for balance. If this ship had had any rowboats, they were gone now. 

He looked nervously into the water. Sure, there was a good chance that if he jumped in, he'd only sink five hundred feet at most before landing on an easily-walkable upward slope from the seabed beneath the ship to the island's shore; but he had no interest in jumping and _then_ discovering the ship was sinking into a two-mile-deep crevasse. He'd have to find a way to swim. If he could make some kind of raft, or... hmm. 

This wasn't going to be pleasant. 

He left his pelt bundle on the deck and climbed back down under the frigid water. 

A minute later he re-emerged, bearing a chest of drawers (drawers removed) and enough fleeting glimpses of a _third_ corpse lurking at the edge of his eye light to haunt his nightmares for the next year. He dumped the water out of the chest, dragged it up onto the dry end of the hull, loaded his pelt inside; then lay his waist on the edge of it with his arms in the hollow chest of drawers for support, pushed into the water, and started kicking toward the island. 

It looked a long way away. 

* * *

He was too cold to tell how much time had passed. It felt like he'd been kicking forever; only the fact that it was still night contradicted this. The island looked no closer. He wasn't entirely sure he was even moving; he was telling himself to kick, but he couldn't feel his legs anymore. Nor his arms, his wings, his face; and even his back was starting to go numb. If his chest froze over... 

But, slowly, the island loomed larger. 

But not very much larger. 

It was an iceberg. A tiny iceberg. He allowed himself a moment to try to well up enough energy to feel disappointed, but he was too cold. So he swam around the iceberg, the drawerless chest of drawers nudging floating sheets of ice out of the way as he went, and continued on straight toward mainland. It was his only hope now. 

When he finally crawled onto dry land, he was too frozen to celebrate. He rattled like a full suit of armor falling down a staircase. The horkers on the shore lurched away from the noise he made; for a moment he considered chasing one and grabbing onto it for warmth, but decided that in his state, even they were too fast for him to catch. Never mind them. There had to be something on this island he could set on fire to warm himself. 

He scooped his pelt bundle out of the drawerless chest of drawers, stumbled uphill from the shore, and trudged toward a scraggly but promising shrub. He dropped the pelt to the ground while he pulled on the shrub. But as he tried unsuccessfully to tug it up by its roots, over the crest of the hill he caught sight of a stone pillar, supported by two buttresses. 

He paused, looking warily at the buttresses and the decorative flourishes rising from them—flourishes shaped like stone claws. He recognized that architecture. The dragon cult. _Humans._ Oh, they were bad news. Under any other circumstances, he'd be wise to put as many miles between himself and those buttresses as possible. 

Under the current circumstances, he didn't think he could make it back down to the shore without collapsing. He couldn't even uproot a bush. Dragon cult it was. He could speak the language and he was willing to profess undying devotion to the local priest, he'd be fine. Just as long as they stuck him somewhere warm. 

He picked up his pelt again and trudged toward the buttresses until he found a worn path marked by stone arches, and turned to follow it. The wind blew hard against him, kicking up fallen snow that felt like glass shards, making him squint. There wasn't even a door; just an open cavern sloping down into a subterranean cage, flanked on either side by massive, stylized carvings of dragons. He eyed the dragons nervously; but he didn't stop—he couldn't afford to waste the energy he'd spend stopping—and descended into the darkness. 

**Author's Note:**

> Also available on [tumblr](http://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/182775611327/vulkreinzaan-chapter-1).


End file.
